How We Met - July, 1992 - Private RP Part 2

When he next woke, Sephiroth found with slight frustration that he was aware of precisely how long he'd been asleep down to the second. Something he hadn't had happen in over a year, though he supposed he shouldn't be surprised after the previous night and his own mentioning of a subject he'd put behind him. It had been worth it, though, to calm Tseng down, even if he knew he'd never felt as much fear then as his brother did last night, he hadn't really understood what death meant at that age. Not sure what had woken him, he glanced around the room, eyes lingering on the plastic-covered window for a moment before continuing.

Kiyomi looked down to him before her eyes shifted back to her son. Tseng had finally fallen asleep after hours of endless nightmares every time he seemed to close to his eyes. She gently held a finger up to her lips and motioned over to where Tseng was curled up his back to Sephiroth. "He just fell asleep." She whispered and moved around the bed to Sephiroth's side. "How did you sleep."

Sephiroth's eyes flicked to Tseng's sleeping form before sighing mutely at the question. He did feel better than earlier, less tired, though he wasn't sure if it was the sleep or the fact he'd eaten - or both. "Well enough," he murmured as he cast his eyes back to her face. "No dreams." As per usual when that memory was repeating in his subconscious. This time noticing how his finger was twitching, he forced it to still.

She sighed softly glancing over to her son. "I wish I could say the same about Kyoya.. every time he closed his eyes he was jerking back awake scared out of his mind. The few times he did manage to fall asleep he started tossing with in minutes... nightmares kept waking him up." It was heart breaking because there was nothing she could do to help her child. "If he wakes up again, i'm going to ask he be sedated.. he needs sleep, but he's so afraid he's never going to wake back up he can't."

Sephiroth's face fell at her words, eyes returned to his brother/cousin with concern. Being sedated would help his physical health... but it would do nothing to help him get a handle on his fear. "I hope what I told him earlier didn't make that worse..." he murmured quietly to himself. He'd brought it up in an attempt to calm him, an example that just because someone had died once and been brought back didn't necessarily mean they would die again shortly and stay dead.

"Death, is a very personal thing.. everyone handles it differently. Kyoya has never handled death well.. When a fellow Assassin he was close with was killed he locked up completely around anyone close to him.. distancing himself. When he was alone, I could hear him crying, screaming, getting angry with the world around him.. Death has always been his greatest fear." She looked to Sephiroth sadly, "he was in the hospital for three months during the Wutai plague outbreak... people were dying every other minute, so many people were dying so fast no one was returning to the life stream fast enough...they were having to burn the bodies as soon as they were pronounced, hoping to stem the spread... because of how contagious it was I wasn't allowed to be in with my baby.. He came out terrified of hospitals and death..insisting if he went back he was next. He didn't sleep for days afterwards, and his sleep was so light until the plaque was gone.." A few tears slipped down her face, but she quickly wiped them away. "I know sedation won't help his mental state, but if he doesn't sleep...he'll be right back where he was last night."

Carefully, trying not to jostle the bed or Tseng so as not to wake him, Sephiroth eased into a sitting position, pulling his right knee up. From that description he was fairly sure that mentioning his own death had been a rather bad thing to mention. Maybe it had calmed him down in the short term... but it had likely made him feel worse in the long term, adding another weight to his emotional load.

"Death is just an... ending to me," He kept his voice low, curling around his knee and resting the side of his head against it as he looked over at her. "It's the things that accompany it that frighten me. Loss. Failure..." The cave surfaced in his mind and was promptly stomped on and shoved away as he added under his breath to himself, "Retribution."

"He once told me that what scared him the most about death was simply no longer existing.. not waking up to see his family or his friends again.. knowing that he would simply only exist in people memories." She reaches out gently running her fingers through his hair, a child this young should not have these thoughts of death already. "A warning though, if he's venting... just let him vent. People have many times in the past brought up how their issues in something similar were worse...It just causes him to clam up, feeling he had no right to vent because they had it worse, and it just builds and builds.."

Sephiroth winced at the confirmation of his own thoughts, turning away slightly so that his forehead was against his knee. Stupid. Just another example of how he didn't understand other people. He knew how his mind worked... but everyone else was a mystery to him. Which was why he tended to make mental lists of characteristics, paying attention to details.

Kiyomi sighed softly recognizing that look and moved sitting gently on the edge of the bed next to him and pulled him into her arms. "It's alright you didn't know, everyone is different.. what works for one person may not work for another, if you remember that you will do fine." She rubbed his back gently.

Feeling movement behind her she reached out grasping her son's hand seconds before he bolted upright panting hard.

He stiffened slightly at the touch to his back, not expecting it. Tseng was one thing, but he still wasn't as comfortable around Kiyomi, which was in part because she was female. It was also due to how he'd only known her a day and most of that time she was either not present or he was asleep. He was also a little reluctant to accept her comfort when it was her son that he had made feel worse. Sephiroth was startled by Tseng's abrupt awakening, and wondered how he hadn't woken up earlier if that was how he'd kept starting awake. He would've thought he'd have stirred the first time it happened, rather than after it had occurred multiple times.

Kiyomi gently pulled her son into her arms laying his head down on her shoulder. "It's alright baby, you're still alive..." It always broke her heart to see him like this. "Can I just go home please...I don't want to be here anymore.." His hid his face in her neck but his hand reached out grasping the waist band of Sephiroth's pajama bottoms, fingers brushing up against the warm skin there. Kiyomi kissed the side of his head speaking to him softly, rubbing her fingers against the back of his neck willing to calm him down.

At the touch, Sephiroth reached back to gently curl his fingers around Tseng's wrist. Could they actually go back to the compound? Neither of them were in critical condition, and the infection had been beaten down. Maybe Tseng would have an easier time sleeping in the apartment... and there was such a thing as an oral antibiotic if the doctors were still concerned over the infection. "...Could we?" He asked curiously, having not actually seen any hospital staff since he first woke in this room, he had no idea when they were supposed to be released.

"I don't know let me go ask..." Kissing Tseng's forehead Kiyomi pulled away standing and moved from the room. With the lack of contact Tseng pulled his knees up burying his face in them wrapping his free arm around hiding his head. He kept his hand latched onto Sephiroth's waist band. "Were you scared?" His voice was soft and muffled by his knees.

Shifting back a bit so that he was closer, Sephiroth frowned slightly. He wasn't quite sure when he was asking about. It couldn't be last night, or now... which left another subject of sensitive nature. Had him mentioning it effected his nightmares?

"When I...?" He left the last word unspoken, not quite wanting to say it after what Kiyomi had told him.

Tseng tilted his head enough so that his eyes could be seen over his knees. "Yeah.. were you scared afterwards?" He was terrified, but was doing his best to hide it so that he didn't look like a scared teenager. He was an Assassin and a Turk, but he was letting small things affect him... He was normally so much stronger than this.

He shook his head turning his head away, "I don't want these nightmares.. they are only getting worse every time.. the last two you were in them.."

He threw Tseng a startled look at the idea of him being in Tseng's nightmares. Sephiroth moved his hand from his wrist to comb through the older teen's hair. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what role he had played, and chose to focus instead of the actual question instead of the statements.

"I..." Sephiroth sighed softly, tilting his head back as his gaze fell on the clock. "I didn't understand what had happened at first. I had been sedated... I thought it was just a strange dream. I was confused when I woke up, alone, and even more so when I realized the door to my room was unlocked. I didn't actually realize what had happened until I was found on the sixty-fourth floor by Veld." As he had spoken his words had become slower and quieter, gaze drifting to a blank spot on the wall as his eyes lost focus, not really seeing the clock anymore, but instead the very similar one from his memories. "...I ended up breaking every single analog clock and watch in the science department that week."

He turned into the hand, those nightmares had been disturbing... but he knew they were nightmares, what was the chance of Sephiroth having a leather fetish and carrying around a sword longer than he was tall?

"I'm sorry... I can only imagine what it felt like at that age.." He gave a mirthless chuckle, eyes turning away. "Yet here I was throwing a temper tantrum like a two year old that didn't his ice cream..." Tseng shook his head, rubbing his eyes which were starting to burn again. "Could be worse huh.. We both could be in the life stream now huh.."

"It wasn't a temper tantrum," Sephiroth shook his head, eyes still rather unfocused. After what Kiyomi had said, he was going to make sure Tseng knew he had every right to be upset - though he'd prefer if he weren't at risk of physically harming himself... "I didn't really understand what death meant then, if that had happened now....The Tower would likely be a few levels shorter." He closed his eyes, shaking his head again to try to clear the image from his mind, before resting his head against Tseng's shoulder.

Tseng snorted slightly, curling his legs under him and laid his head on top of Sephiroth's. "If you do, make sure I'm not in the tower.. or if I am, I'm down in the bat cave okay. And make sure you take out Hojo and Hollander...and Shinra.. leave the administrative level alone." He chuckled lightly closing his eyes. "I only say that cause they have this really cute accountant down there that has the loveliest ass that you just want to squeeze."

"Pervert," Sephiroth murmured, but it was more fond than berating. He was loathe to break the silence more than that, though, now that Tseng had settled. What was it they kept saying? That he must be feeling better if he was being perverted? He certainly sounded better, real amusement in his tone rather than fear or that more disturbing hollow tone.

Tseng playfully shoved him, a smile lighting his features. "That wasn't nice otouto.. I'm not perverted, I'm a sixteen year old male with mako enhanced hormones to go with it." He tilted his head to the side thinking, "Mm guess that does make me a little perverted.. but.." He poked Sephiroth's nose mainly to see if he would go cross eyed. "You can not tell me you have not looked at anyone.. you're fourteen years old.. those hormones should have more than kicked in by now."

Going cross-eyed at the poke, it took Sephiroth a moment to register what he said next. He flushed lightly, looking away, he was not going to gratify that with a verbal response. Honestly, he wasn't even sure why he was embarrassed by the subject. While he was certainly able to notice if someone was attractive, he hadn't actually encountered anyone he was actually attracted to.

Chuckles seeing him go cross-eyed, though the blush cause his attention. It was almost like little cat ears appeared on his head as his curiosity was piqued, and he leaned in looking at his otouto. "Ohh.. what's the blush for hmm...have you actually found someone and your just to embarrassed.. Or are you embarrassed that you actually do find yourself staring at oh..tits or someone's ass." Yes he was being a pain but he couldn't help it, he was a very curious creature, and really what were big brothers for other than harassing the younger siblings.

Do not reply, Sephiroth reminded himself, biting back a few words before he could say them. Anything he said would just fuel the teasing, he knew, but it was more difficult to control something as reflexive as a blush. He pointedly kept his eyes on the wall instead of letting them flick back to his brother, trying to keep his blush from deepening any further. It was so much easier to just accept Tseng's pervertedness... when he wasn't the subject in question.

» How We Met - July, 1992 - Private RP Part 2
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